Investigators delving into Alvin Liknes business dealings in bid to find him, his wife and his grandson

CALGARY — The former head office of Winter Petroleum Ltd. sits on the second floor of a Calgary strip mall: the office is now dark, the desks barren, the door locked.

This was apparently Alvin Liknes’ company. The property manager said she often saw Mr. Liknes around the building: he was a good man, she said, and the company always paid its rent on time.

The space was cleared out sometime around June 29 — on the same weekend Mr. Liknes disappeared from his home, along with his wife, Kathryn, and five-year-old grandson, Nathan O’Brien, according to the property manager.

The trio’s apparent abduction remains a mystery. Investigators are delving into the Likneses’ business dealings as they try to disentangle the mystery of the trio’s disappearance.

Police have probed a farm north of Calgary since Saturday, and on Wednesday expanded the search to the Spyhill Landfill northwest of the city. One man, Douglas Garland, remains in custody, although he has not been charged with the disappearance.

According to a police source in the Calgary Herald, Mr. Liknes and Mr. Garland also had a fight over a business deal dating back several years.

The Likneses, both of whom had previously declared bankruptcy, have a long history in real estate and the junior oil and gas industry in Calgary: the Post has found Alvin Liknes is linked to at least four separate companies.

Although Mr. Liknes was not listed as a director for Winter Petroleum, an employee told Calgary Metro that the oil and gas entrepreneur led Winter prior to its recent declaration of bankruptcy. A phone number listed under Winter Petroleum still cuts directly to Mr. Liknes’s voicemail.

“This is very unfortunate, looks like [a] tragic event,” Marek Kozera told Metro. “I really hope this has nothing to do with Winter.”

Another of the companies Mr. Liknes is linked to, Blue Sky Oil and Gas Corp. was registered in Nevada in 2008. A press release said it was involved with natural gas production.

According to U.S. Security and Exchange Commission filings, in 2008, Blue Sky was in merger discussions with a Florida company called Whitemark Homes Inc.

Beset by the housing crash, Whitemark proposed to take up resource development: one of the businessmen involved with that deal was a Sarasota, Fla.-area real estate developer with close ties to a man who was sentenced to three years in federal prison in 2012 for masterminding a large house-flipping fraud in the state.

The State of Nevada’s last file on Blue Sky dates to 2010, and the company’s business licence has since been revoked.

Calgary Police have declined to comment on the Likneses’ businesses. Mr. Liknes’s colleagues remain skeptical that his business has any connection to the disappearance.

Bruce Carson, who is a registered director at Vecto Resource Services Ltd. along with Mr. Liknes, said he has worked with the missing grandfather off and on for about 20 years.

“He’s just a great guy to work with, whether things worked or didn’t work, he was giving his best efforts,” Mr. Carson said from his B.C. home. “I can’t picture anybody being angry enough to do what they’ve done.”

Mr. Carson said Vecto was working on a type of pump that could keep water out of oil and gas wells, allowing them to be productive for longer stretches of time; however, Mr. Liknes’s invention didn’t work out, and the plan was dropped.

Mr. Carson said he hadn’t spoken to Mr. Liknes in a few years.

“He’s a golfer and he was just ready to start to retire. He was the same age as me; he had a place down in Mexico and was going to spend six months up there, six months up here. They were just a very normal family. Everything about them was kind of average, really, as far as I know they sure weren’t wealthy. I don’t understand why this happened at all.”

On the weekend of their disappearance, the Likneses held an estate sale at their home in Calgary’s Parkdale neighbourhood; they were hoping to clear out furniture before spending several months in Mexico. They then planned to move to an address in Edmonton.

Title documents show their home was sold to a Calgary lawyer at the end of last year for $705,000.

Mr. Carson said Mr. Liknes had previously expressed concern about the viability of Winter Petroleum.

“The last time we talked about that about three years ago, [he said] there were new regulations coming into effect that would affect Winter adversely,” Mr. Carson said.

Both Alvin and Kathryn Liknes had declared bankruptcy in the past; Alvin in 1994, and Kathryn in 2012.

Kathryn Liknes was a licensed real estate agent in Calgary, although the Real Estate Council of Alberta said she had not been practising as a realtor for two years.

Numerous Facebook pages and online profiles list the grandmother as a social media marketer who offered Search Engine Optimization services, and website templates for businesses. She also engaged in direct marketing for a company that sold skincare products called Nucerity.

Mr. Garland made a court appearance in Calgary on Wednesday to face charges of possessing an ID stolen from a 14-year-old boy who died in a car crash in 1980. He had used the same ID to evade police capture for seven years in the ’90s after he was charged with producing drugs on his parents’ farm — the very one police search this week.

Police were called to search that Airdrie property after a tip revealed Mr. Garland possessed an older model green truck similar to one seen driving around the Liknes home on the night of the disappearance.

Additionally, Mr. Garland’s sister is in a relationship with a member of the Liknes family. Court records show Garland has a criminal past and mental problems.

Calgary Police spokeswoman Emma Poole said seven officers were going through the Spyhill Landfill, routine in such missing persons cases and it’s expected officers will be checking other landfills in the area as well.

“They’re attempting to cast a wider net,” said Ms. Poole.

On Wednesday, the Crown and defence both agreed Mr. Garland could be released with a number of conditions. He first needs to provide a new address for where he would be staying, with the search ongoing at the farm where he had been living. He is to return to court Friday.